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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Sonia panel proposes food court by Radhika Ramaseshan

Sonia panel proposes food court by Radhika Ramaseshan

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published Published on Jun 13, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 13, 2011
Any Indian denied food security rights will be able to seek quick legal redress if the government accepts a suggestion from the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council.

The council wants the National Food Commission, a watchdog against any violation of the National Food Security Bill, to be given all the powers of a civil court. Its verdicts are to be binding on the government.

Such a measure will help provide quicker and cheaper justice (compared with ordinary courts) to those denied their full quota of rations or cheated with substandard foodgrain, the council believes. The provision is aimed mainly at curbing malpractice at the level of local administrations and fair-price shops.

This recommendation is part of the final draft of the council’s version of the bill, which the government will now go through before finalising the legislation that Sonia wants introduced during Parliament’s monsoon session.

The council put up its own final draft on its website over the weekend and sent it to the government, as well as to the additional solicitor-general for legal vetting.

According to the council, the National Food Commission will have the power to summon witnesses and examine them on oath, and to requisition any public record or copy from a court or office.

It will be headed by a sitting or retired Supreme Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice and endorsed by a panel made up by the Prime Minister, leaders of Opposition in the Houses, and the Lok Sabha Speaker or a nominee of the Speaker. It cannot be headed by an MP or MLA, the council has clarified.

The council has suggested several other roles for the commission, such as:

Advising the Centre on framing schemes to deliver the food entitlements;

Monitoring the conditions of those living in starvation;

Counselling a state government to notify an area as disaster-affected.

The council has tried to pre-empt charges of allowing the Centre to “appropriate” the powers of a state — an accusation it has faced over its draft communal violence bill. Therefore, its draft food bill recommends the formation of state food commissions patterned after the national body, but with the rider that litigants can appeal a state commission’s order before the national commission whose word will be final.

In its final draft, the council has stuck to its stands of universalising the public distribution system in the face of the Centre’s reservations, keeping in mind that below-poverty-line (BPL) lists are often flawed. For the same reason, it has retained the stress on specifically identified vulnerable groups such as pregnant and lactating women, children under six years, the destitute, the homeless, and victims of emergencies or disasters.

The council’s draft bill says that every person has the right of access, at all times, to “quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and safe food” to remain free of hunger and malnutrition.

The specified grain quotas are: at least 7kg of rice, wheat or millets per person per month at a price not higher than Rs 3 a kg for rice, Rs 2 a kg for wheat and Re 1 a kg for millet in the “priority” (BPL) category, and at least 4kg per person of the same grains at slightly higher rates to those in the “general” (above-poverty-line or APL) category.

The council’s draft makes it incumbent on state governments to first “proactively” identify the vulnerable groups and then provide them with “local and freshly cooked meals” at least thrice a day for six months from the date of identification, and then give them subsidised grains.

The Telegraph, 13 June, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110613/jsp/nation/story_14106249.jsp


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